Could Cratylia argentea replace Tifton 85 hay on growing and finishing lamb diets in tropical areas?

Elaine Cristina Teixeira; Lucas Freires Abreu; Fernando Antônio de Souza; Walter José Rodrigues Matrangolo; Karina Toledo da Silva; Luciano Soares de Lima; Hemilly Cristina Menezes de Sa; Ângela Maria Quintão Lana

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0295510

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionFebruary 2, 2023
12 Mar 2023 Decision Letter - Marcia Saladini Vieira Salles, Editor PONE-D-23-03057Could Cratylia argentea replace Tifton 85 hay on finishing lamb diets in tropical areas?PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Elaine, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by 04/04/2023. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. 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Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Marcia Saladini Vieira Salles Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. In your Methods section, please provide additional information regarding the permits you obtained for the work. Please ensure you have included the full name of the authority that approved the field site access and, if no permits were required, a brief statement explaining why. 3. We note that the grant information you provided in the ‘Funding Information’ and ‘Financial Disclosure’ sections do not match. When you resubmit, please ensure that you provide the correct grant numbers for the awards you received for your study in the ‘Funding Information’ section. 4. Thank you for stating the following in the Financial Disclosure Statement of your manuscript: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. This work was supported by the National Council of Technological and Scientific Development (CNPq, Brazil #140314/2019-9), Minas Gerais State Agency for Research and Development (FAPEMIG, PPM-00639-18) and the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES, Brazil #88887.667823/2022-00). " We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: "This work was supported by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq, Brazil nº 140314/2019-9), State Agency for Research and Development of Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG, PPM-00639-18) and Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel of Education (CAPES, Brazil nº 88887.667823/2022-00). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 5. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability. Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized. Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access. We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter. 6. Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please move it to the Methods section and delete it from any other section. Please ensure that your ethics statement is included in your manuscript, as the ethics statement entered into the online submission form will not be published alongside your manuscript. Additional Editor Comments: Summary: describe in the summary the total period of the experiment. Weight gain between treatments was not shown in the results. L70 to 73: Please insert in the sentence the justification for why it would be more suitable for small production systems. The introduction is too long. Suggestion: text from L108 to 123 can be used in the discussion and removed from the introduction. Authors need to be careful in claiming that Chrysalia hay can replace 100 % Tifton hay due to the value of nutrients found in Tifton hay that was used in the experiment. M&M: Why do a digestibility test at the beginning and another at the end? L 150: Could you please verify that this FDN value is correct? It seems very low to me than normally found for this food. Table 3: Data can be described in the text. There is no need for them to be transcribed into a table. L283 to 285: I think the authors are misinterpreting the results. In the way the results were arranged, when there is the significance of L (treatment) as only one P was generated, it means that the results used for the statistics were the data set of both periods (715.1 and 716.2) which would be an average close to 715.65 for 0 and 690.9 for 100% treatment (681.7 and 700.1). If the P is specific for the initial period, then the authors must provide the other probabilities and indicate with letters where there was a difference. L290 to 292: display different letters when there is a statistical difference between means. The table should be self-explanatory and show all existing results. Table 6. Data are hard to follow. It would be interesting for the authors to provide a more didactic disposition of the results. Tables. Present two decimal places after the point to better understand the variability of the data. The standard error of the mean is two decimal places. Statistics: Did the authors test the strength of the experiment? From the averages found in most of the variables and the respective standard errors, it is doubtful that there was no difference because the experiment was not strong enough to obtain differences due to the low repetition of animals per treatment. L318 to 320. The authors describe that the animals were weighed weekly and do not present any weight or weight gain data from the treatments. Only in time. Please present the results with the respective standard errors of the mean and probabilities. It is also important to better visualize the efficiency results. Results: The authors have the digestibility coefficients and did not present the nutrient intake. Why? If we do the DMI calculations, animals with 100 g of C. argentea hay ingested 300 g more food per day compared to 100 g of Tifton. Is it worth it, isn't it worth it for food costs? This would be an interesting part for the authors to discuss in the 'Discussion' section. Discussion: The discussion needs to be revised and improved. In most of the text, the authors discuss the differences in time due to the growth of the animals and compare them with the results of other authors. They do not bring a discussion that advances knowledge about the purpose of the study. The authors affirm the high content of lignin in the hay of C. argentea but do not present the results of this component in the work. I think that to use this discussion it would be interesting to present the results of lignin and/or to present average data on the amount of this component of other authors who used this food in their research. L406: The fact that the greater the amount of ingested protein causes more water consumption is explained by physiology. To excrete nitrogen the organism needs to do it together with water. Please review physiology studies. Conclusion: The authors need to reflect a little more on the results obtained to conclude the complete replacement of C. argentea hay by Tifton hay, given the high variability of the results and the low repetition of experimental units. Mainly by the results of digestibility coefficients found. Unless even the food has worse digestibility, and with the additional cost of offering this food to obtain the same weight gain, it is economically compensated for the producer. Conclusion: Please remove the last paragraph from the conclusion because nutrient parameters in different hays harvested at different times were not studied. Please get the references right. Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Could Cratylia argentea replace Tifton 85 hay on finishing lamb diets in tropical areas? it is an original work and brings a good proposal for an alternative replacement to a food that is already consolidated in the diet of ruminants in Brazil. The work is adequate and offers sufficient subsidies for publication in Plos One, provided that the authors consider all the suggestions made in the manuscript. The title begins with a question, based on the findings, the authors are expected to answer in the conclusion clearly and to recommend the replacement level. Reviewer #2: General points about the manuscript: The manuscript brings interesting information regarding evaluation of alternative feedstuff. The manuscript is very well vritten, with sufficicient information, but there are some especifics issues that must be reviewed. Line 142 to 148: The paragraph has significant wordiness and awkward phraseology. Please try to make the paragraph more explanatory. Rewriter. It is confusing. Line 174 – Drums is the best word to use? Check it. Line 176 - …November 2020 and lasted January 2020. Is the year “January 2020” correct? The lambs stay 64 days in an individual metabolic cages? The word “orts” is the best word to the context? ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PONE-D-23-03057_reviewer.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295510.r001
Revision 1
25 Sep 2023 Author Response Response to Reviewers Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf A: adjusted. 2. In your Methods section, please provide additional information regarding the permits you obtained for the work. Please ensure you have included the full name of the authority that approved the field site access and, if no permits were required, a brief statement explaining why. A: adjusted. 3. We note that the grant information you provided in the ‘Funding Information’ and ‘Financial Disclosure’ sections do not match. A: adjusted. Information over the “cover letter” file. When you resubmit, please ensure that you provide the correct grant numbers for the awards you received for your study in the ‘Funding Information’ section. 4. Thank you for stating the following in the Financial Disclosure Statement of your manuscript: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. This work was supported by the National Council of Technological and Scientific Development (CNPq, Brazil #140314/2019-9), Minas Gerais State Agency for Research and Development (FAPEMIG, PPM-00639-18) and the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES, Brazil #88887.667823/2022-00). " We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: "This work was supported by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq, Brazil nº 140314/2019-9), State Agency for Research and Development of Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG, PPM-00639-18) and Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel of Education (CAPES, Brazil nº 88887.667823/2022-00). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. A: Reviewer, the amended information was moved to the Cover Letter, as requested. 5. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability. Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized. Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access. We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter. 6. Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please move it to the Methods section and delete it from any other section. Please ensure that your ethics statement is included in your manuscript, as the ethics statement entered into the online submission form will not be published alongside your manuscript. A: Information adjusted, as requested. Additional Editor Comments: Summary: describe in the summary the total period of the experiment. Weight gain between treatments was not shown in the results. Figure 1A answers this. From the graph, it can be seen that the animals gained weight at a rate of 1.93 kg per week, which gives an average daily gain of (1.93/7 = 275 grams/day). L70 to 73: Please insert in the sentence the justification for why it would be more suitable for small production systems. Authors decided to remove this sentence. The introduction is too long. Adjusted, as requested. Suggestion: text from L108 to 123 can be used in the discussion and removed from the introduction. Indeed. Thanks for the suggestion. Authors need to be careful in claiming that Cratylia hay can replace 100 % Tifton hay due to the value of nutrients found in Tifton hay that was used in the experiment. M&M: Why do a digestibility test at the beginning and another at the end? As this is a new food, we sought to evaluate the performance of the animals at different times during the experiment. That is, growing animals and animals already finishing. L 150: Could you please verify that this FDN value is correct? It seems very low to me than normally found for this food. The Neutral Fiber Detergent (NFD) values are consistent with those found in other studies. Gama, T. D. C. M., Zago, V. C. P. Nicodemo, M. L. F., Laura, V. A., Volpe, E., & Morais, D.G. (2009). Composição bromatológica, digestibilidade in vitro e produção de biomassa de leguminosas forrageiras lenhosas cultivadas em solo arenoso. Revista Brasileira de Saúde e Produção Animal, 10(3), 560-572. Montero-Durán, E., Rojas-Bourrillon, A., & López-Herrera, M. (2021). Sustitución de Cratylia argentea y Erythrina poeppigiana por guineo cuadrado en ensilados. Nutrición Animal Tropical, 15(2), 123-146. https://doi.org/10.15517/nat.v15i2.48818 ÁLVAREZ CARRILLO, F.; FERNANDO CASANOVES; CUELLAR MEDINA, Y.; ORTIZ MENESES, J. F.; BALANTA MARTINEZ, V. J.; CELIS PARRA, G. A. Nutritional quality of Piptocoma discolor and Cratylia argentea as a non-timber forest products for animal feed in the Caquetá province. Journal of Agriculture and Environment for International Development (JAEID), [S. l.], v. 116, n. 2, p. 109–120, 2023. DOI: 10.36253/jaeid-13102. https://www.jaeid.it/index.php/jaeid/article/view/13102 Table 3: Data can be described in the text. There is no need for them to be transcribed into a table. Adjusted. L283 to 285: I think the authors are misinterpreting the results. In the way the results were arranged, when there is the significance of L (treatment) as only one P was generated, it means that the results used for the statistics were the data set of both periods (715.1 and 716.2) which would be an average close to 715.65 for 0 and 690.9 for 100% treatment (681.7 and 700.1). If the P is specific for the initial period, then the authors must provide the other probabilities and indicate with letters where there was a difference. L290 to 292: display different letters when there is a statistical difference between means. The table should be self-explanatory and show all existing results. Table 5. Data are hard to follow. It would be interesting for the authors to provide a more didactic disposition of the results. Tables. Present two decimal places after the point to better understand the variability of the data. The standard error of the mean is two decimal places. Adjusted. Statistics: Did the authors test the strength of the experiment? From the averages found in most of the variables and the respective standard errors, it is doubtful that there was no difference because the experiment was not strong enough to obtain differences due to the low repetition of animals per treatment. To detect small differences between the means, for data that have a high standard deviation, a high number of repetitions would be necessary, that is, a very large number of animals, which could make timely research unfeasible, as approved by the ethics council. L318 to 320. The authors describe that the animals were weighed weekly and do not present any weight or weight gain data from the treatments. Only in time. Please present the results with the respective standard errors of the mean and probabilities. It is also important to better visualize the efficiency results. Added table with this information Results: The authors have the digestibility coefficients and did not present the nutrient intake. Why? If we do the DMI calculations, animals with 100 g of C. argentea hay ingested 300 g more food per day compared to 100 g of Tifton. Is it worth it, isn't it worth it for food costs? This would be an interesting part for the authors to discuss in the 'Discussion' section. Indeed. Thanks for the suggestion. The objective of the present study is to evaluate Cratylia as a new food that can be introduced into the market for feeding ruminants, however, there is no pricing yet. However, the productive seasonality of tropical forage grasses, such as Tifton-85 grass, requires investments in infrastructure and machinery, which consequently reduce the net profitability of the production system. Therefore, the use of Cratylia can be an interesting alternative, especially where conditions for the cultivation of other forage species may be limited. Discussion: The discussion needs to be revised and improved. In most of the text, the authors discuss the differences in time due to the growth of the animals and compare them with the results of other authors. They do not bring a discussion that advances knowledge about the purpose of the study. The authors affirm the high content of lignin in the hay of C. argentea but do not present the results of this component in the work. I think that to use this discussion it would be interesting to present the results of lignin and/or to present average data on the amount of this component of other authors who used this food in their research. Adjusted. L406: The fact that the greater the amount of ingested protein causes more water consumption is explained by physiology. To excrete nitrogen the organism needs to do it together with water. Please review physiology studies. Indeed. Thanks for the suggestion. Conclusion: The authors need to reflect a little more on the results obtained to conclude the complete replacement of C. argentea hay by Tifton hay, given the high variability of the results and the low repetition of experimental units. Mainly by the results of digestibility coefficients found. Unless even the food has worse digestibility, and with the additional cost of offering this food to obtain the same weight gain, it is economically compensated for the producer. Conclusion: Please remove the last paragraph from the conclusion because nutrient parameters in different hays harvested at different times were not studied. Adjusted. Please get the references right. Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: “Could Cratylia argentea replace Tifton 85 hay on finishing lamb diets in tropical areas?” it is an original work and brings a good proposal for an alternative replacement to a food that is already consolidated in the diet of ruminants in Brazil. The work is adequate and offers sufficient subsidies for publication in Plos One, provided that the authors consider all the suggestions made in the manuscript. The title begins with a question, based on the findings, the authors are expected to answer in the conclusion clearly and to recommend the replacement level. Adjusted in the authors' best discretion Reviewer #2: General points about the manuscript: The manuscript brings interesting information regarding evaluation of alternative feedstuff. The manuscript is very well vritten, with sufficicient information, but there are some especifics issues that must be reviewed. Line 142 to 148: The paragraph has significant wordiness and awkward phraseology. Please try to make the paragraph more explanatory. Rewriter. It is confusing. Adjusted in the authors' best discretion. Line 174 – Drums is the best word to use? Check it. Adjusted. Line 176 - …November 2020 and lasted January 2020. Is the year “January 2020” correct? Adjusted. The lambs stay 64 days in an individual metabolic cages? Yes. The word “orts” is the best word to the context? Yes, it is. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers - PONE-D-23-03057.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295510.r002
30 Oct 2023 Decision Letter - Marcia Saladini Vieira Salles, Editor PONE-D-23-03057R1Could Cratylia argentea replace Tifton 85 hay on finishing lamb diets in tropical areas?PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Teixeira, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by November 20th. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Marcia Saladini Vieira Salles Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Additional Editor Comments: The authors sent the first version without line numbers, which made the manuscript review process very difficult. Please insert line numbers in the next revision. Be careful when sending files. They include comments from the authors. Please correct the punctuation in the introduction. By changing the names of the authors to numbers, the text was distorted. There are also other parts of the text that need to be revised for spacing and punctuation. Abstract: The objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of 'growing' and finishing Lacaune lambs fed Cratylia argentea hay as an alternative to Tifton 85 (Cynodon spp). Keywords suggestion: forage conservation, forage digestibility, ruminant feeding, shrub legume, small ruminant performance In the Results section, please present the real probabilities found for the respective variables and not less than 0.05. Please provide ADF values for Tifton hay. It was requested that the lignin values of the respective hays be presented, mainly from Cratylia argentea as there was discussion about this component, the authors responded that it was adjusted but I did not find it in the final version of the manuscript. Table 5: if there was no interaction between treatment and period, please remove the P values for LxC. Table 5 = table 6????? Table 7: Please correct. The value presented as BW does not match the weight of the animals presented at the beginning of the M&M of 21.5 ± 3.38 kg. I think the authors must be presenting weight gain here. But I ask the authors' attention because in the answer given to the questions it was written that the weight gain was 275g/day and the table says 250 g/day.Favor verificar os dados apresentados na tabela 6 e 7. Table 6 0% 20% 40% 100% DMI 1.50 1.58 1.47 1.64 Digestibility 692.72 697.54 688.64 672.84 " Actual MS intake 1.035 1.09 0.99 1.10" Table 7 1.50 1.60 1.51 1.66 There are two tables 7. In the second table 7, as there was no interaction between LxC, please remove it from the table and only describe in the text that there was no interaction for these variables. Please present this nitrogen data in the same format shown in table 6. Discussion: the 100% C. argentea treatment had the worst N retention ratio. This means greater nitrogen excretion into the soil. And this is not desirable. I think the authors should take this into account in the discussion and conclusion. Conclusion: digestibility results were worse for C. argentea hay when at 100% replacement. We can see that numerically the conversion efficiency values were worse for this treatment (100%). No difference was detected because variability is high. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I suggest the authors evaluate their conclusion in suggesting that C. argentea hay can replace Tifton hay by 100%. General suggestions: consider using a greater number of repetitions per treatment in future experiments. Six is a low number for performance experiments due to the variability of the respective variable. Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. 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Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295510.r003
Revision 2
9 Nov 2023 Author Response Information attached to the submisstion and renamed as "Response to Reviewers 2 - PONE-D-23-03057 - 2023-11-07". Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers 2 - PONE-D-23-03057 - 2023-11-07.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295510.r004
13 Nov 2023 Decision Letter - Marcia Saladini Vieira Salles, Editor PONE-D-23-03057R2Could Cratylia argentea replace Tifton 85 hay on growing and finishing lamb diets in tropical areas?PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Teixeira, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 28 2023 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Marcia Saladini Vieira Salles Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Additional Editor Comments: Dear Dr. Elaine, Thank you for resubmitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. I have completed the review of your manuscript and a summary is appended below. There are only minor adjustments to the manuscript. Please, when sending the revised manuscript again, send it with the accepted considerations highlighted in yellow and not in the 'control changes' review mode. This makes the review work very difficult. Please present this nitrogen data (table 6) in the same format shown in table 5. It was requested in the previous opinion. In the nitrogen table 6 there is a number marked (3) as excluded which I think was not meant to be excluded (13.83). Please check. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295510.r005
Revision 3
16 Nov 2023 Author Response attached Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers 3 - PONE-D-23-03057 - 2023-11-16.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295510.r006
23 Nov 2023 Decision Letter - Marcia Saladini Vieira Salles, Editor Could Cratylia argentea replace Tifton 85 hay on growing and finishing lamb diets in tropical areas? PONE-D-23-03057R3 Dear Dr. Teixeira, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Marcia Saladini Vieira Salles Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295510.r007
Formally Accepted
1 Dec 2023 Acceptance Letter - Marcia Saladini Vieira Salles, Editor PONE-D-23-03057R3 Could Cratylia argentea replace Tifton 85 hay on growing and finishing lamb diets in tropical areas? Dear Dr. Teixeira: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at customercare@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Marcia Saladini Vieira Salles Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295510.r008

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